A record number of 1,723 new business entities received VAT registration in a single day on Wednesday.

Out of these, 46 are in the manufacturing category, 862 are service recipients, 500 are retailers and wholesalers, 29 are importers, 9 are exporters, and 277 are other organizations, according to a press release from NBR.

This is a new record during the current government as the Chairman of NBR is monitoring the daily registration.

All the VAT Commissioners at the field level are simultaneously finding new taxpayers and identifying competitive VAT payers.

Yesterday, a total of 1,723 businessmen including 579 in Chittagong Commissionerate, 180 in Dhaka (North) Commissionerate, 266 in Dhaka (West) Commissionerate, 195 in Khulna Commissionerate, 50 in Rajshahi Commissionerate, 47 in Jessore Commissionerate, 41 in Rangpur Commissionerate, 27 in Comilla Commissionerate, and 71 in Dhaka (South) Commissionerate accepted new registrations across the country. The officials of the 12 VAT Commissionerates of the country are also working extra hours to increase VAT collection and expand the tax net.

The NBR has been working to implement the government's new policies and guidelines for revenue collection. Increasing the tax-GDP ratio, satisfactory tax collection, and expanding the tax net are among the government's goals.

To this end, officials of the Income Tax, Customs, and VAT divisions are working simultaneously in the field.

These activities are continuing in line with the various initiatives of the current Chairman of the National Board of Revenue.

In order to increase VAT revenue and coverage, several new instructions have been issued to the field commissioners under the implementation division from the first week of February.

Earlier, the NBR declared February as the registration month for commissioners.

To that end, yesterday, the member (VAT Implementation and IT) gave instructions to the representatives of the important platforms iBAS++, iVAS and Genex and all the officials related to VAT implementation to maintain involvement, connection and coordination.

Similarly, he also involved the field-level commissioners.

As a result, a record number of new business establishments have been registered in one day.

Incidentally, the current government has already brought amendments to the existing VAT law to increase the coverage of registration.

Now, any businessman whose annual turnover is more than 50 lakh taka will have to get VAT registration.

All field commissioners from NBR have been asked to work with taxpayers with a service-oriented mentality in issuing new registrations and collecting legal revenue, and to work out of the box through merit-based activities to increase new VAT payers.

The NBR Chairman congratulated and thanked the hard-working VAT officials for bringing a record number of businesses under registration and called for continuing the work-oriented mentality.

The Chairman specially requested all stakeholders, businessmen, representatives of electronic and print media to cooperate with NBR officials and create awareness in increasing the tax net.